Couch: Dane Fife talks Indiana, recruiting, Izzo and what's next
A Q&A with MSU's assistant coach, a former Hoosier standout
EAST LANSING - It is still strange to watch Dane Fife prepare Michigan State’s basketball team to beat Indiana.
Fife, as I first got to know him from afar, embodied Indiana basketball. He was a Michigan Mr. Basketball at Clarkson High School turned Hoosier transplant, among the last to play for coach Bob Knight, finishing his career as starter on the 2002 Mike Davis-coached team which lost in the national championship game.
Fife came back to the Hoosiers in 2003 as an administrative assistant and then, in 2005, became the youngest head coach in Division I basketball, taking over the Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne Mastodons at age 25.
He left IPFW in 2011 to be an assistant coach for Tom Izzo at MSU. In the nearly five years since, Fife, now 36, has endured the highs and lows of MSU’s recruiting and experienced the end of Draymond Green’s career through the final days of Denzel Valentine’s.
On a Thursday in February, three days before Indiana’s visit to Breslin Center Sunday, he took the Spartans through the scouting report during practice.
“Is it a little different feeling when Indiana is my scout? Yes,” Fife said.
In an interview this week, Fife talked about Indiana, about recruiting, working for Izzo and becoming a head coach again.
Question: Do you still feel an emotional tug when Indiana basketball takes the floor and you see those candy stripe warm-up pants?
Fife: “We’ve got the stars (on the back of the shorts) for the five championships. I look at that and I see the candy stripes and I get a little emotional. There’s a reason why I went there.There’s a reason why that place still matters to me. There are a lot of people still there still involved with the administration and a lot of coaches that I knew. It’s a special place to me, no question.”
Q: You’re one of the last heralded recruits to get out of the state that coach Izzo really wanted. Do you think if you would have come along years later, after MSU’s ride, that you would have had any inkling of wanting to go to Indiana?
Fife: “My desire to go to Indiana was instilled when I was 6 years old. I watched Indiana and Michigan, 1985 for the Big Ten title. Bill Frieder sent my dad a VHS tape. It was the first VHS tape I’d ever watched. And I just became fascinated with how the announcers were talking about Indiana — Bob Knight, Indiana’s offense, defense. And I think Indiana lost by 25, but it was my destiny right there. It was just always a dream. Had Jud Heathcote sent my dad the first tape of the 1985 Scott Skiles team, it might have been different. (I was) pretty trivial back then (at age 6), pretty superficial. And then the movie ‘Hoosiers’ comes along, which just further emphasizes, ‘This is where I belong.’”
Q: Among your reasons for leaving your head coaching job at IPFW in 2011 to be an assistant at MSU, you said you wanted to experience winning big. What have you learned that you didn’t know when you arrived at MSU?
Fife: “From a head coaching perspective, there’s a certain way to manage a program. Sometimes with vigor, sometimes with a tender touch. But nonetheless, a coach has to have the pulse of his program. In fact, a coach has to have the pulse on every aspect of his program — from the managers, to the secretary, to recruiting, to how people view his program, to how his players’ parents view his program. And that pulse is important. It allows you to make adjustments. And it’s become CEO-like. That’s really how I view coach Izzo, he’s a CEO. He’s the ultimate manager of the program. Oh yeah, and then he has to coach, which has made this level so difficult to be successful at. Because there are so many different things. But he manages it, because he has a pulse. And what that takes is time. Time, time, time. And somebody suffers. It’s usually him.”
Q: When you look back on your time at IPFW, do you think, I handle that differently knowing what I know now?
Fife: “I think settling (in recruiting). It’s so much harder recruiting (there). We would lose to nobody sometimes. ‘Ah, I don’t think I’m going to play basketball.’ But recruiting, it’s so important, getting the guys, getting the student-athletes that represent what you want your culture to be, what you want your program to be.”
Q: Are you glad you coached at IPFW? Does it make you more well-rounded having lived that low-major experience?
Fife: “No question. We had to fundraise for everything. I had to go out and find cars for my staff. We’re out at the (student) union begging students to come to our games. I think we got one or two of them to come. We’re playing at an 11,000-seat arena with, the box score says it was 1,200 people, I think it was more like 600 people. Empty arenas. We’re traveling commercially. We’re traveling 12 hours by bus one way. We’d drive out to the Dakotas and come back — both ways by bus. A lot of bus trips. The salaries at that time … my top assistant was $32,000. Second was $30,000, third was like $20,000.”
Q: You were a fairly big-time recruit coming out of high school …
Fife: “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Q: Were you an easy recruit?
Fife: “Yes, very easy. Low maintenance. In fact, my dad at one point just said (to coaches), ‘Hey guys, look, you guys have done what you need to do. You don’t have to make these unannounced trips … we know you guys care. We’ll sort it out, we’ll weigh the pros and cons and let you know on this date.’ My brothers went through it. My dad was courteous. It wasn’t really about him. It was about getting it right. I assume that was a very easy recruitment, with the exception that I waited all the way to the signing in November, which is a pain. Because you’re all in generally, and you’ve lost out on your Plan B and C.”
Q: Were you surprised by how much of a headache some kids can be as recruits? Did you have a sense of that when you were playing?
Fife: “I didn’t. I didn’t understand and I didn’t understand how involved parents were. I didn’t understand how much politics played into it. You’ve got to stroke this person, but you’ve got to be careful because you can’t stroke this person when they’re going to be with this person, because they don’t like each other. Different kids have different groups of people around them. It’s usually a puzzle. You’ve got to be able to fit the pieces together perfectly.”
Q: How different is it here versus IPFW?
Fife: “There’s a lot more at stake for kids generally at this level. And they’re a lot more under the microscope. I feel bad for the people that work with these kids. Because they know that there’s a lot of … people are trying to make a buck off of them, so they’re very apprehensive. Very mistrusting. I think what we try to do is be as honest and up front as possible. We pick the people that we think are generally going to be easy recruiting from the standpoint that we’re not dealing with people who are generally going to ask us for money or ask us to circumvent the rules. For me, I’m pretty fortunate because that’s not what Michigan State does. The stuff we’re describing is out there. Michigan State doesn’t deal with it. And if it starts to occur, we remove ourselves.”
Q: When you come into a program like MSU do you feel a pressure to deliver kids in recruiting?
Fife: Absolutely. It’s high pressure. Our kids are our lifeline. We have to be able to deliver the players that make Michigan State special, the student-athletes that make Michigan State special.
Q: So when Tom Izzo is taking criticism for missing out on the Chicago kids and Tyus Jones a couple years ago, as an assistant, when those kids are’t coming, what is that feeling like?
Fife: “It’s a deep, dark, low feeling. It feels like your team was upset on your home floor. It’s a dark place in the world of college basketball at this level to lose a recruit, or the group of kids that we lost. The whole world knows it. You’re embarrassed, concerned for your program, concerned for your job. It’s just like a loss. It’s a deep, dark, low feeling. It’s depressing, no question. But, I think that worked out pretty well. We’ve turned out OK. And that’s what you don’t realize — it’s never as bad as you think.”
Q: The group of recruits you have coming in that signed, Coach Izzo was very complimentary of you and his staff. How gratifying was it to land that group?
Fife: “I think that’s one of the things that’s pretty unique here. I remember talking to Mike Garland when I was coaching at Fort Wayne. And he explained to me that they really don’t have a point man on the recruit. We do it together. And I got here and it’s true. You take Josh Langford who's, I guess technically (my recruit), if you want to have a point man. But DJ (Dwayne Stephens) did his work on certain people including Josh and the Langford family. … It’s kind of how we work. We’re expected to all get to know the recruit. We’re expected to all get to know the people that matter to the recruit.”
Q: And when Langford commits, for you, that’s got to be a …
Fife: “When you have a recruit commit, I mean it’s like a big win. When Langford committed we had a guy we’d worked on. I remember watching him for the first time in Indianapolis as a sophomore and his dad was really excited we were there because he knew Josh had always wanted to play for us. He’s always wanted to play in the Big Ten. And so we went and watched him play in the gym and he didn’t play very well, I mean he didn’t stand out. But he had the things, the tools that I think coach is looking for, certain things. He can play with or without the ball. Had a good midrange game, he’s athletic, he was engaged. It looked like he was out there trying to win the game. Not just running up and down.
“We thought, we’re chasing a kid that we’ve got to feel better about than him simply saying he wants to play in the Big Ten, because there are three different Big Ten schools — us, Michigan and Indiana — that are recruiting him. (Big Ten interest alone isn't) good enough for us to recruit a plane flight away. You’ve got to have something else. We’ve got to hear something. And so the first call (period) came around, June 15 right after their sophomore year. … You talk to the kids enough to where we want June 15 to just be another day. So Josh’s dad calls us and says, ‘I guess you guys aren’t recruiting my son?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we’re recruiting him, what do you mean?’ I said. ‘OK, I’ll tell you what, if we’re important to you, get your butts up here, come on up here and see us. Because I’ve got to be able to sell to coach that it’s worth our while to be able to come down to Alabama to recruit your son. Because we like your son. In fact, we love your son. But we’re not going on a wild goose chase. I have to be able to sell to my boss that it’s going to be worth his time.’ And so Kentucky was recruiting him, Duke was recruiting him. I mean, we’ve been down that road, right. Sure enough, they came up here. We had a great time. They came up here I think it was the end of June. It just took off from the there. Coach loves guys who express their desire to be a Michigan State Spartan. It was more than (coming up). It was his body language. It was the way he spoke to coach, drove it home. “
Q: How has your relationship with coach Izzo changed in four years?
Fife: “He’d always been a friend and a big supporter, a mentor. His friend Steve Wickens describes it as, my relationship with coach reminds me of his relationship with Jud. For all intents and purposes, it was described as tough love. Is it easy working for Coach Izzo? No. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be extremely hard. If you want to win at this level, you have to bring it every day. And Coach drives it home to us every day. But I think in the end, you know he gives a damn about you. He’d go to the end of the earth to help you. It’s a very good working relationship. Is it easy? No. And I don’t want it to be. In fact, I remind him sometimes to teach me, help me, help me learn. If you see me doing something wrong, don’t sit back, drive it home, make sure I’m doing it right. Because I want to be able to coach at the level that he is. In fact, coaching is one thing, winning is another. I want to be able to win at the level that he does. And I’ll take some good, some bad away if I ever get my own program again.”
Q: Have you gotten what you wanted to yet out of this experience and are you ready for another head coaching gig?
Fife: “I think I have absolutely gotten what I wanted. There are so many different things to learn from coach Izzo. … I’m certain there’s a lot more to learn. I came here to ultimately become a better coach. I think I have become a better recruiter, I think I’m a better manager. And hopefully I get my chance. Do I think I’m ready for another head coaching job? I do think I’m ready. Am I ready to leave Michigan State? No. But if the right opportunity comes, obviously I’d have to look at it because there’s only 350 Division I head jobs in the world. I think if any of us get the right opportunity, we’ve got to take a look at it.”
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.